I’ve been thinking a lot about scars lately, both physical and emotional ones. Some scars barely impact our lives, but others have more lasting impact.

When I burned 40% of my body over 30 years ago, I had some scars that were so tight I had to have them surgically removed and expanded by cutting zigzag patterns into them. Other scars from that burn healed pretty well, although they left me very susceptible to being stared at, especially by young children. I’ve learned not to let those stares bother me, recognizing they come from a sense of curiosity. Instead of getting stuck in self-consciousness, when I find a kid’s eyes locked on the extensive scars on my leg, I use it as a teaching moment and say “this is why you have to be careful with fire.”

I’ve decided some scars should be celebrated as recognition of our endurance and as signs of a life fully lived. For example, a piece of good china sitting on a shelf may never get a chip in it but neither does it share the pleasure of being used. I have a soapstone woodstove that is beautiful to look at, but it now has some scars on it. I often cook on it and sometimes what I’m cooking spills onto the stove, soaking into the stone and darkening it. Rather than bemoaning the unsightliness of these stains, I celebrate them as proof of a stove well loved and well used. My body certainly has plenty of scars, but with those scars come some lovely memories of a life that has experienced many adventures. It reminds me to see scarred and older bodies from a more positive place.

Some scars are much less visible, such as those from torn tendons, internal organ damage and emotional scars. Yet sometimes these impact our lives even more than visible ones, which is why I’ve learned never to judge anyone from external appearances. When a child grows up always afraid of those who are supposed to keep her safe, as an adult she may approach everyone she meets with fear. Sometimes this causes behaviors that are negatively judged by others who don’t understand that the person is merely acting from her learned view of the world.

It took me many years to understand this and a lot of painful emotional work to move beyond fear into a place of trust. It wasn’t a straightforward process. I had to learn trust over and over again from different dissociated parts of myself. I strove to open my heart and not live from a place of anger or fear. I had to learn to trust myself and my abilities and convince my inner children to stop waiting for an external person to rescue them. And it was only when I stopped fearing people that I became able to let in their caring with trust that I wouldn’t later be made to feel guilty for accepting their kindness. As I decreased fear, I increased my ability to focus on gratitude and kindness and my life began to feel worth living. However, like the burn scars, my childhood experiences left emotional scars, which do sometimes rear up and leave me staring once again into the eyes of that childhood trauma.

I recently had the first of numerous surgeries on my foot to smooth out the scar and make it less painful and contracting. Because I chose not to do surgery on the donor site on my thigh, which while still quite painful does seem to be slowly healing, I was able to advocate for and finally get a local nerve block for anesthesia as opposed to being put completely under. I don’t like the effect of anesthesia and prefer to use minimal drugs of any kind. But since I was constantly being told this was an extremely painful procedure and I had to have some numbing agent, I agreed to the nerve block.

After repeating my name and birthday more times than I can count, I was wheeled into the operating room where they administered what I think were twelve shots around my ankle to numb the foot. I say 12 because I have 12 good size puncture holes around my ankle where the needles went in. I was surprised at how many and how painful those shots were. I had to focus my attention to breathe through them.

Almost immediately after the injections, they begin the laser surgery, burning thousands of small holes into the scar in my foot. Because they did not wait for even five minutes after injecting my ankle, I felt every one of those lasers burning into my foot. In essence, I was going through the surgery with no anesthesia! My blood pressure spiked to 190/90 and the anesthesiologist became concerned until I explained it was because I was feeling everything that was happening in my foot. I assured her it would calm down when the surgery was over.

I am glad it was a pretty quick procedure. To be honest, I’m not sure how much more I could’ve tolerated.

After the surgery was over the surgeon told Lynne, who was my ride and contact person, that I had felt every bit of it. A nurse in the recovery room told me that those nerve blocks take at least a half an hour to take affect. In fact, it was only as I was leaving the recovery room about an hour later that I felt my foot beginning to go numb, but only on the top and not on the sides where the surgery had been done. Three days later, the top of my foot is still numb. Immediately after the surgery, I could feel a posttraumatic stress response coming on. Internally I was shaking and starting to distance from my body. All I wanted to do was curl in a ball and cry. While this reaction was based in the present, it reactivated some of my old emotional scars. I had to remind myself I wasn’t little anymore, being held down and hurt by people much bigger than I was.

Trying not to let inactivity bring me down, I’m focusing on what I can do to get ready for my next hike. I’ve been dehydrating food and planning my route. My intention is to go by people power from the monument in Glacier National Park, which is the eastern end of the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT), all the way to West Quoddy Head in Maine. For much of this. I will use the North Country Trail (NCT), the last of the eleven national scenic trails I have yet to hike. I’m exploring the option of connecting the PNT to the NCT by water. I have a hiking acquaintance who did this and has given me some good information on how it can be done. I have a friend who might be able to do some of that with me next summer, so since my preference is to have someone with me when I do that water section, my tentative plan for this summer is to leave my car with friends from the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin and find a way to get to Lake Sakakawea State Park in North Dakota which is the western end of the NCT. I will hike east on the NCT as far as my feet will take me without extreme pain. The trail goes more than 460 miles in North Dakota. Then it crosses 850 miles in northern Minnesota before traversing 200 miles in Wisconsin. If I am able, I would like to continue into Michigan, which has close to 1200 miles of the NCT. I think that’s about as far as I would be able to get this year, especially since I’ll be getting a late start due to more as yet unscheduled surgeries. If my foot is too painful when I’m doing this, I’ll return home and continue with the surgeries. They told me it can take up to eight of them before desired results are reached.

Because of the emotional work I’ve done, I was able to recognize what was happening as I descend it into a posttraumatic stress response, so I reached out to many people, hoping that by talking about what happened, I could stay out of a full-blown dissociative response in which I would be stuck reliving the past over and over again. I slept very little that first night and cried about five hours the next day, but while I still feel shaken inside, I do believe I’ve been able to prevent this from becoming yet one more internalized trauma impacting my life for years to come. In part, I did this by acknowledging the pain of what I was feeling, reaching out to friends who helped me remember I had what it took to overcome this, and nurturing those hurt little ones inside. In the recovery room I asked for chocolate ice cream and on the way home we stopped so I could buy a large hot chocolate, both which have a soothing effect on my inside little people. I’ve made arrangements to have some bodywork done to help me release more of the trauma held in my body, and though tears I managed to call my physical therapist and ask if we could step up the dry needling in hopes this will limit the number of laser surgeries I’ll need.

Thinking about doing more of these surgeries scares me, until I remember I can advocate for myself. I’ve done some research and have some ideas of what I want to ask for to numb the pain the next time. I just hope I’m listened to.

So far the post surgery pain has not been too bad, except that my entire ankle where they stuck the nerve block in is bruised. I’m trying to take it easy and give the foot a little time to recover before I start pushing it to do the things I’m itching to do. I’d love to get a few more runs down the mountain, especially now that we’ve gotten some fresh powder, and I want to start walking more, getting in shape for this summer’s planned hike.

People in the hospital thought I was crazy to be thinking about hiking this summer, but that’s because they only see the scar on my foot. They don’t see the scars I carry from childhood trauma, nor do they understand that what laser surgery does for the burn scar, adventuring does for the internal scars of my childhood trauma. Being surrounded by nature, the sense of accomplishment I feel as I work hard to reach my goal, and the endorphins I get when moving my body all make me feel better. Hiking forces me to feel and be present in my body as opposed to distancing from and losing touch with my body through post traumatic stress dissociation caused when others much bigger than I held me down and inflicted pain.

I think there is a long tradition of travelers being met with curiosity and kindness along their journeys and this is certainly true when I hike. I meet untold numbers of kind people who bring me more lasting healing than almost anything else I’ve ever done. And so while the folks in the hospital, were focusing mainly on my physical burn scar, I’m planning this next adventure, knowing it’s up to me to take care of my internal, emotional scars just as fastidiously as I’ve been taking care of my foot.

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